


Haboob: Dust Storms

by WhaleTheFatDolphin



Series: Novae [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Future, M/M, hidehaiseweek2015, intergalactic au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhaleTheFatDolphin/pseuds/WhaleTheFatDolphin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haise visits a fellow galactic officer’s suspect, who not only knows of his past but could hold the key to one of Haise’s brightest dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haboob: Dust Storms

As the young man stirred, Haise’s mind was a huge flurry of possible opening sentences. Should he say a pun to try and keep things friendly? Or should he just get straight to the point? After all, he received a painful punch in the stomach for his incompetence from Akira the last time he came across the young man. He shouldn’t try to be friendly. But, Nagachika was nothing but.

Regardless of what Haise was going to say, Hide beat him to it. “Hey there, buddy. Do you, by any chance, know where the keys are to the handcuffs?”

Haise let out a soft chuckle and he shrugged. He nudged his chin towards Hide’s bound wrist. It was clear that he was struggling against it though it was more of a playful display. “See, here, I’m technically a visitor. I wasn’t the one who apprehended you. You’re not my suspect, Hide.”

Hide brightened. Haise felt that it was truly like another galaxy was riding on the edge of his hemisphere. It was a beauty that Haise could only see every six months and sometimes, that wasn’t enough for him. The way Hide’s eyes sparkled and the way his grin not only reached his lips, it reached every inch of his body. Haise wanted to do everything in his power to keep him shining like that. Yet, a trickle of doubt dripped down his back. His spine shivered involuntarily. It was a dangerous thing to completely fall like that, without any safeguards. He shouldn’t be friendly. He shouldn’t give in to whatever was stirring down in his gut.

“I have a few things to ask you.”

“As expected. Well, you’re my visitor, not my interrogator. Shoot any question you like,” Hide exclaimed. His laugh intertwined with his words, releasing a carefree and cheery atmosphere. It was hard to keep the corners of his lips from smiling. Haise needed to be serious. After all, he was a galactic officer.

“Who are you, Nagachika?”

Hide paused, a hum rolling on his tongue. His face furrowed and twisted, scrunched and crinkled. He was thinking hard. Even through the comical antic, Haise was still having a hard time reading him. What was he thinking? What was he going to say? Haise brought his chair closer to the hospital bed when Hide’s face finally relaxed and he began to speak. “I guess the best place to start is to tell you where I’m from. My home planet is Sector 72-5, you know, the red dusty planet you see during the winter moons. Ma and I came to Sector 72-4 and settled down in Hydra. This planet certainly has a better view of the sky, let me tell you that. I remember seeing… nothing but red dust during the night. Red dust, brown dust, black dust, purple dust. Nothing but dust. Here, you could see the neighbouring planets and galaxies. Stars twinkled in the clear sky. People here were so used to it that they didn’t even look up anymore. Except you. I mean, I doubt you remember our real first meeting. We were just kids. I wasn’t some alien mastermind and you weren’t some dangerous soldier. We were just Hide and… and Haise.”

Haise remained unresponsive for quite some time. Special Class Arima hardly mentioned Haise’s past. But, Arima claimed he didn’t have the right information, and neither did Akira. They both found Haise on a dwarf exoplanet labeled GH-12, a colony of the ghoul alien species. At least, that’s what all the reports told him surrounding the event three years ago. If Hide was telling the truth, he knew more about him than Arima and Akira combined. His tongue reluctantly spread across his lips, thinking his next words over. He murmured, “Do you know what happened to me? What happened on GH-12?”

“You suddenly disappeared. Did you know that we were both in school to become astronauts? The kind that’d drive the huge tour ships across galaxies. I knew something was up when you stopped attending class. You only talked about traveling space since we met. I constantly tried to contact you, but I’d get nothing. When I found out that you were kidnapped and taken to a ghoul-inhabited planet, it was too late. You were already far gone. You hardly recognized anyone. You… It just hurt seeing you the way you were. A lot of people told me that it was just a hopeless case to try and bring you back. To try and make, you look past what the ghouls did. I always came back. I told you before, right? Rabbits die out of loneliness. There was this old human belief that reincarnation, the transfer of souls from one life to the next, was something that happened to everyone. If that’s true, I think I might have been a rabbit in a previous life, you know?” Hide’s voice cracked a little at the end of his explanation. His brown eyes dimmed some. He started up again, though it wasn’t as exuberant as before, “I tried to find you three years ago. I even assembled a small team of similar misfits… but the galactic office took advantage of your amnesia. I was too late, again. So, I spent the next three years turning my team into a band of criminals just to get your attention. I couldn’t help but think how lonely you must have been, not knowing anything. I used to be comforted in the fact that we saw the same sky, wherever we were. But these next few years made me realize… it’s just not the same sky unless I knew, for sure, that you were happy.”

Haise’s lips trembled. “You… did all that… for me?”

“Yeah, of course. You’re my…” Hide let out a chuckle as he trailed off. His grin broke through the melancholy mask he tried to put on. He shook his head once. “I’d do anything for you. I mean, I kind of did get myself beat up by Juuzou’s team just so you could find me.”

Haise finally let out a warm and light laugh. His smile was shining, despite his watery eyes. “Hanbee told me that you weren’t giving it your all. He picks up on things like that.”

“Now, what do you want to do? I mean, you know all I know about GH-12. You can stay being a galactic officer. But, I know how much you love the sky. Searching the sky would make you happier than anything in the universe,” Hide stated. The nurse walked in as he spoke though Hide didn’t flinch.

The nurse was a jorogumo, a species from a planet different from Sector 72-4. Jorogumos resembled arachnids with their eight limbs, though they remained bipedal. Purebred jorogumos resembled spiders more so with dangerous claws at the end of their limbs, protruding venom-injecting fangs and eight eyes. Haise knew this because he was neighbours with a purebred (who was actually really good at cooking and folding origami). However, the nurse was a half-breed. She had many human features, with two eyes, fangs that barely poked out of her closed mouth, and six pairs of human-like arms rather than arachnid appendages. Her skin was a sleek ash grey and she had thick, wiry silver hair pulled into a tight bun. Hide thanked the nurse but Haise could feel something was up between the two when he smiled. It was a knowing smile. The kind of smile that Haise could make out sometimes in his blurry memories. A smile towards a friend.

Despite the flags going up, Haise’s voice was strong as he spoke, “I want to go with you. I want to see the sky away from the ground… at least once. I have responsibilities here, though, Hide. I have to come back.”

Hide’s beautiful grin stretched across his lips. It lit up the room, even making a small laugh bubble out of the nurse. “You hear that, Ana? You hear that? I told you! I told you he’d want to come! Now, go get your sister! We’ve got to show Haise the Ververg nebulae and he’s got to see the Forbidden Codex up close!” Hide yelled.

He was getting so excited that a clear, pink line was reddening on his wrist. It was the strain from the handcuffs. Ana let out a sheepish laugh and daintily pointed towards his bound wrist. Haise nodded in wordless agreement. He knew something was up. Was Hide planning this the entire time? Nonetheless, the blond boy laughed out of embarrassment for forgetting about his entrapment.

“It’s really nice to finally meet you, Sasaki, sir,” Ana whispered when she approached the hospital bed. Her green irises were pupil-less, but they still shone with doting kindness. Despite the stigma that their appearances gave, jorogumos were often the nicest species that one could come across. Haise moved his chair back so that Ana could reach the handcuff.

As Ana gnawed at the metal with her teeth, Haise evaluated his decision. He’d most likely be demoted by the galactic office. He’d most likely never be trusted again. His status of mentor would be stripped and he wouldn’t be able to teach the Quinx. No, no matter what happened, whether or not Haise was on suspension, Akira assured that he’d always be the mentor of the Quinx. That was something he never needed to worry about. However, his reputation would be tainted. He’d never be able to leave on an interplanetary mission ever. Would Arima place a heavier bounty on Hide and his team? He doubted it - Arima’s motives were in a grey space and Haise couldn’t decipher what he wanted. If he truly wanted Hide alive and in the detention center, he would’ve just went after him himself. There was something else going on. That same trickle of doubt ran down his spine like a cold ice cube.

“Oi, this is taking too long. Juuzou scheduled an interrogation within the hour, I’d hurry it up,” a female voice barked from the entrance of the hospital room. She looked to be a regular human. Ana whined incomprehensibly as she continued to eat away at the metal. Before long, Hide’s wrist was free from the hospital bed and the handcuffs. Ana was quick to spit out the metal with disgust, a thick, blue-green liquid spewing from her mouth along with metal chunks. Haise knew what that meant. However, Ana did nothing about the fact that she was bleeding and continued on. Haise decided to follow in her footsteps.

“Oh, by the way, Haise. This is my second-in-command, Ana. She’s a hybrid experiment, just like you. This lovely lady,” Hide motioned towards the young woman who told the group to hurry, “is Kagari Machado. She and Ana are half-sisters. Well, more like… 40% sisters?”

“It doesn’t matter what we are.”

“Yes it does! I mean, you and Ana are kind of like Haise and I! We’d do anything for our special someone!”

“… That sounds really wrong, and you know it, Nagachika.”

What was Kagari implying? How often did Ana and Kagari have to listen to Hide talk about Haise? Hide was bursting with memories of the two. Hide could probably remember their first meeting to the perfect detail. Hide could probably even map out all the stars and galaxies that Haise wanted to visit. All Haise had was this familiar feeling of warmth and comfort clouded with useless, broken strings of memories. Ana and Kagari could potentially know more about Haise than he knew about himself.

“Your special someone, huh?” Haise murmured to himself. Despite all the uncertainty this situation held, Haise could get used to being called “special someone” by Hide. It felt right and natural.

“Come on, Sasaki, sir,” Ana urged.

“Hurry up and just hold hands with Hide. I’ve got a bet with Katsu that you’d join us,” Kagari grumbled. Ana scowled in Kagari’s direction. The two continued to bicker until they reached an emergency exit. The two sisters opened the door, revealing the busy, hover traffic of the Alphard district. Ana and Kagari jumped without hesitation. Haise stopped in his tracks, a couple paces away from the door. Hide paused at the doorway, the wind rustling his long dirty blond hair. He looked back at Haise.

“Let’s go home, okay, Haise? You don’t have to remember everything about before. I don’t care about any of that. I just want you happy.”

_‘I’m home with you, Hide. Wherever we are.’_ Haise couldn’t utter the words. He was too scared to. Even so, Hide could probably read him better than a picture book. Haise tried to mirror his starry grin, though he probably didn’t do it justice. Hide was out of this world… quite literally. This time, when Hide outstretched his hand, Haise didn’t hesitate to reach out for it. He didn’t feel like collapsing like he did when they first met. No, this time it was different. Haise was home.


End file.
